In this 17 May 2011 article from the internal newsletter SIDToday, the NSA Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Associate Deputy Director for Counterterrorism, Jon Darby, decribes how the NSA played a “critical” role in the raid in bon Laden’s Abbottabad compound: see the Intercept article What the Snowden Files Say About the Osama Bin Laden Raid, 18 […]

This extract from the 18 April 2013 edition of the internal NSA newsletter Special Source Operations Weekly provides details of five PRISM reports based on the output of Iranian academics working in the field of medical science. The presentation says the universities “are suspected of being linked to Iranian CBW [chemical and biological warfare] programs”: […]

﻿UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
The overall classification of this briefing is:
TOP SECRET//SI//ORCON/NOFORN
Approval for dissemination of infor...

This October 2008 article from an NSA internal newsletter SIDToday Enhanced Video Text and Audio Processing (eViTAP), a tool that provides automatic translations of news broadcasts in English, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin and Farsi: see the Intercept article The Computers are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text, 5 May 2015. sidtoday-non-linguists-final

This NSA presentation from March 2009 explains how agency analysts can exploit HTTP data through XKeyScore: see the Intercept article XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications, 1 July 2015.

This NSA presentation from 24 June 2009 explains how to use the email search functionality within XKeyScore: see the Intercept article XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications, 1 July 2015.

U.S. Signals Intelligence System resources are allocated in the following areas: 35 percent are dedicated to the global war on terrorism; 35 percent are dedicated to China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia; 20 percent go to remaining strategic focus areas; and 10 percent are set aside for development in data acquisition, signals development, or analysis and production.

This internal NSA document from April 2013 gives background information to prepare for the then GCHQ Director’s visit on 30 April and 1 May; included topics include access to PRISM data, FLAME malware, Iran, Syria and Israel: see the Intercept article British Spy Chiefs Secretly Begged to Play in NSA’s Data Pools, 30 April 2014. […]

First Instance Reporting is a new type of reporting that allows “forward-deployed” signals intelligence personnel “to push information out much earlier in the production cycle.” So far, there have been 3,300 such reports, including information about the inspection of uranium processing activities in Iran, Russian government knowledge of a terrorist plot, and others.

This October 2005 article, taken from the internal NSA newsletter Foreign Affairs Digest, provides a brief history of the agency’s past and current relationship with its Turkish counterparts, which includes a staff of 40 NSA employees stationed in Ankara: see the Intercept article How the NSA Helped Turkey Kill Kurdish Rebels, 31 August 2014. Download […]

A brief description of a working group focused on monitoring and helping to exploit virtual private networks, or VPNs. Established in 2004, the working group publishes regular "VPN Target Activity Reports" on dozens of countries and organizations around the world. "These reports may help you exploit targets' VPNs more successfully," the chair of the working group writes.

The authors tell two stories about the NSA supporting the CIA and FBI. In 2004, the NSA shared intercepted conversations between "a high-priority HUMINT (human intelligence) target and his close family relatives" with the CIA, which was conducting a "major operation" related to Iran's weapons of mass destruction program. And in 2005, the NSA helped Russian linguists from the FBI analyze intercepted communications from a Russian communications system, helping to "rule out some suspected communicators."

(Repost) NSA refers to media leaks as “cryptologic insecurities.” This article lists several examples from 2000-2002 (from CBS News, “New York Times Daily News,” the Washington Times, and WorldNetDaily) along with damage assessments and follow-on actions, like reporting to the DOJ and requesting an FBI investigation.

This NSA presentation from 16 July 2009 explains how the XKeyScore system supports the agency’s Tailored Access Operations: see the Intercept article XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications, 1 July 2015.

This 61-page NSA presentation from May 2010 provides analysts with a guide to tracking individuals within XKeyScore using the system’s fingerprint capability: see the Intercept article XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications, 1 July 2015.

This 18 July 2007 article from internal NSA newsletter SIDToday describes the interception of a message from Osama bin Laden, which was not transmitted through electronic channels: see the Intercept article What the Snowden Files Say About the Osama Bin Laden Raid, 18 May 2015.

This SIDToday article from 10 March 2005 details the experiences of Eric Fair, a US interrogator in Iraq who went on to work for the NSA. In his memoirs, published in 2016, Fair admits self-censoring in order not to disclose his moral qualms to colleagues: see the Intercept article The Secret NSA Diary of an […]

This 23 March 2011 article from the internal NSA newsletter SIDToday describes an analyst’s surprise at discovering that the agency was collecting internal communications from Venezuelan energy company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA): see the Intercept article Overwhelmed NSA Surprised To Discover Its Own Surveillance “Goldmine” on Venezuela’s Oil Executives, 18 November 2015.

This NSA presentation from 2012 discusses techniques for subverting “lawful intercept” systems used abroad: see the Intercept article A Death in Athens: Did a Rogue NSA Operation Cause the Death of a Greek Telecom Employee?, 29 September 2015.

This 1 August 2006 post from the internal NSA newsletter SIDToday describes advances in the agency’s text-to-speech capability: see the Intercept article The Computers are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text, 5 May 2015. sidtoday-future-is-now-final

﻿(U) For Media Mining, the Future Is Now!
FROM:
Human Language Technology (S23)
Run Date: 08/01/2006
(TS//SI) In the first article on the Human Language Technology Program Management Offi...

This NSA talking points memo dated 12 April 2013 notes that Iran “has demonstrated a clear ability to learn from the capabilities and actions of others”: see the Intercept article NSA Claims Iran Learned from Western Cyberattacks, 10 February 2015.

This internal NSA information paper, dated 19 April 2013, describes a “far reaching technical and analytic relationship” with Israel’s SIGINT National Unit (ISNU): see the Intercept article Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack, 4 August 2014.

The Pursuit Operation Staff manages the NSA’s specific plans for hunting a target of intelligence interest. “Focused Pursuits” bring together a working group of people, organizations, and services from across the NSA to join the hunt.

NSA personnel are integrated with U.S. Central Command at the Tampa headquarters and in deployment to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, and other locations. Gen. John Abizaid says the NSA relationship with CENTCOM is “excellent.”

The United States’s signals intelligence relationship with Turkey started with a 1949 verbal agreement between the CIA and Turkey’s intelligence organization. As of 2005, 40 NSA staffers in Ankara provide technical assistance, training, and support to Turkey’s military and civilian intelligence agencies. Although the NSA’s overt operations in Turkey ceased in 1993, covert SIGINT collection by NSA/CIA Special Collection Service continues from sites in Istanbul and Ankara.

These undated heat maps show the number of pieces of communications data the NSA gathers per country in a particular 30 day period, divided into telephony (DNR) and internet (DNI) metadata. Details in the second map refer to a period in January 2013 and third to a period ending in February the same year: see […]